THE ANATOMY OF A SMEAR

The wicked walk in a circle, not because their life runs circularly, but because their false doctrine runs round in a circular maze. St. Augustine.

Anarchist Lancaster Bomber 11 (July 1995) contains a bizarre Neoist Chronology, which I assume is intended as a list of the major incidents in an ongoing 'dispute' between Green Anarchist and the Neoist Alliance. This chronology omits items such as our leaflet Green Anarchism Exposed but includes Special Branch raids on Green Anarchist and others, although these are obviously nothing to do with the Neoist Alliance. The first item in the Lancaster Bomber chronology is the satirical Fatwa! leaflet issued by the Neoist Alliance in February 1994; at the same time I put out a fake press release purporting to come from the Rushdie camp, which sparked a major investigation and eventually resulted in me being threatened with a long list of legal charges, these incidents aren't mentioned in the Bomber's chronology. British intelligence were very embarrassed when what they initially believed to be an international plot, turned out to be the work of a 'solitary' English novelist, and it was quickly decided that if media coverage of the story could be completely suppressed, then no legal action would be taken against me. Only the Big Issue (who don't observe the D notice system) ran the story, and I narrowly avoided a court appearance. It would be absurd for me to suggest that this brush with the 'secret state' had anything to do with Green Anarchist, although using GA's 'logic' I could claim that since their publication Lancaster Bomber attacked the Neoist Alliance over its Rushdie leaflet (which was, as it happens, the opening 'salvo' in a war of words between us), then these two things must, in fact, be connected.

The Bomber's chronology also reveals its bias by, for example, claiming Re:Action 1 attacks GA for 'anti-Neoist Vril (arbitrary invention).' This claim appears to be based on the headline of the lead article, which was The World As Vril And Misrepresentation. Vril is not an arbitrary invention, at least not on our part, in the famous nineteenth-century novel The Coming Race by Edward Bulwer Lytton, it is the deadly power utilised by an advanced civilisation located in the earth's core. The book was so popular that a new food was named after the secret power possessed by its protagonists; Bovril is a compound word made up of bovine meaning ox or cow, and Vril, the fictitious power featured in The Coming Race. Unfortunately, a number of individuals read this novel as a thinly fictionalised account of real events, and in this way it greatly influenced Nazi hollow earth 'theories.' The World As Will And Representation is the most famous work by the nineteenth-century philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer; Internationale Situationiste 9 (Paris 1964) headlined an article with the pun L'Urbanisme Comme Volonté Et Comme Représentation (Urbanism As Will And Representation). Our satirical headline was not arbitrary as the Bomber ignorantly insinuates, it was an allusion to all of the above. Likewise, a follow-up piece in Re:Action 2 was run under the headline The Fourfold Root Of Insufficient Reason because we thought it would be amusing to elaborate on the previous pun; Schopenhauer's first book was On The Fourfold Root Of The Principle Of Sufficient Reason.

Obviously, having to explain our satire in this fashion rather blunts its impact. Nevertheless, it would be unrealistic to expect our readership to spot all the allusions we make, since no one can be expected to know everything. The problem with the Bomber is that they claim to understand what we are saying when they clearly do not. We explained in Re:Action 1 and 2 that the Programme Of The Neoist Alliance was satirical; we do not believe in programmes and so we send them up by constructing ludicrous platforms. Despite this, in Lancaster Bomber 11 we are asked: 'How anarchist is it to want to control finance, the media and the arts.' This is a reference to points five and six of our satirical programme, and rather than being a literal statement of what we want to do, it is what the Imperial Fascist League claimed the enemies of fascism wanted to do. Apart from failing to understand that this is satire, the Bomber also seems to be under the misapprehension that we imagine ourselves to be 'anarchists.'

The Bomber wants to satirise the Neoist Alliance for using: 'the Hegelian scriptures, even going to the extreme of quoting chapter and verse to prove that: "The supersession of art is found in revealed religion." The intended effect is to impress and intimidate, but it does neither.' Unfortunately the Bomber fails to understand that we are criticising rather than defending this conception. In our letter to Freedom (10/6/95), we were responding to Michel Prigent's claim (Freedom 27/5/95) that we: 'have never been able to stomach situationists because they spoke of the supersession of art.' It would be rather difficult for us to explain the flaws in the formulation that 'art should be realised and suppressed,' without reference to the historical development of the notion. Since we do not expect people to accept our pronouncements without evidence, we refer them to the various sources for our arguments so that they can be checked. I am not surprised that the Bomber dislikes this procedure, because it is completely at odds with the modus operandi adopted by GA. For example, the editorial in Green Anarchist 37 contained the following smear: 'Home's association with Screwdriver (sic) goes way beyond acknowledgement on record sleeves a decade ago.' I have NEVER had any association with Skrewdriver, nor did I receive any acknowledgements on their record sleeves, which is precisely why GA does not cite 'chapter and verse' about the records on which these alleged acknowledgements are to be found; if they did, their sources could be checked and found wanting. In its chronology, the Bomber claims that this editorial 'skits' me for 'alleged links to neo-Nazi Ian Stewart (sic) Donaldson.' In the GA editorial, these links are not 'alleged,' they are stated as fact, the 'skit' comes afterwards, when it is claimed that I had sado-masochistic sex with Ian Stuart. Successful satire works by exaggerating actual truths, since I have no links with Skrewdriver, do not practice sado-masochism and by an accident of social conditioning, happen to be straight, the 'skit' aspect of the GA editorial completely misses its mark. However, I have not objected to the 'skit,' only the smears that precede and follow it; smears which were subsequently taken up, minus the 'skit,' by David Black at Student Outlook (something else missing from the Bomber's 'chronology') and which have now been retracted by that magazine.

The bias in the Bomber chronology is also evident in its re-ordering of events, a common trick among those spreading disinformation. For example, we issued the leaflet No Useless Leniency at the beginning of December 1994, but the Bomber claims it came out in the New Year. Likewise, it is clear the Bomber do not understand this leaflet which detourns the article Le Décor Et Les Spectateurs Du Suicide (The Decor And The Spectators Of Suicide) from Internationale Situationiste 10 (Paris 1966), the anti-Charlie Chaplin leaflet that caused the break between Guy Debord and Isidore Isou, a few lines from Debord's Society Of The Spectacle, a phrase from The Revolution Of Everyday Life by Raoul Vaneigem, the title of an article by Michèle Bernstein in Internationale Situationiste 1 (Paris 1958) and a leaflet by King Mob entitled The Death Of Art Spells The Murder Of Artists. The Real Anti-Artist Appears.

What the leaflet did was turn the words of Debord, and some of those who were at one time associated with him, against the spectacular image being created by his fans. Just because we take some of Debord's writing seriously, it doesn't follow that we have to treat Debord as an individual personality with respect; in fact, it was precisely because we DO consider some of the things Debord articulated to be important that we made this intervention after his suicide. Those who made facile criticisms of our leaflet as 'inhuman,' failed to understand that by attacking idols, we were simultaneously paying tribute to everything in Debord that is still revolutionary. The so called 'death list' on it expands the parodic elements of the tongue-in-cheek 'death list' on the King Mob leaflet mentioned above, which begins with the struck out name Andy Warhol; some time before this tract was issued, the pop artist had been shot by Valerie Solanas, he made a full recovery. Our list is headed by the crossed out names of two individuals who had successfully killed themselves. The obvious implication is that the other individuals listed are also going to commit suicide; surely it is not difficult to see that rather than being a 'death list,' this is a parody of a death list, since the 'victims' are supposed to kill themselves! The Bomber describes this leaflet as simply an attack on Ian Bone, which is an absurd distortion; while the assertion in their chronology that we have produced other material criticising Bone since the New Year, is an outright lie.

GA likes to take things out of context. For example, the Bomber objects to the photograph of a Nazi death camp on the leaflet Green Anarchism Exposed, but doesn't acknowledge that the point being made with this graphic can only be understood in relation to the Sluyterman engraving that is also used as an illustration. Another form of distortion can be found in the fact that the Bomber tries to link perfectly valid criticism of spook mania in Green Anarchism Exposed, to the issue of whether or not what Larry O'Hara has to say about Searchlight in the pamphlets A Lie To Far and At War With The Truth is valid. This is absurd, since between them O'Hara and GA have insinuated that far more than simply Searchlight moles are working for the 'secret state.' Reviewing Turning Up The Heat: MI5 After The Cold War by Larry O'Hara (Phoenix Press, London 1994) in Lobster 28 (December 1994), Robin Ramsay observes that not only does O'Hara: 'conclude his pamphlet with a long list of journalists and the agencies from which he suspects them of receiving material, on p. 37 he proposes renaming the television program World In Action, as MI5 In Action (MI5IA); he sees MI5 "pulling its strings." But he offers no real evidence and, after making such a serious charge, he concludes the paragraph with this: "Hard evidence and leads to follow up on MI5IA I'd be grateful to readers for." This is inviting ridicule.'

Taking one satirical sentence from my article Organised Chaos (Independent 25/10/94) out of context, the Bomber claims that it is: 'an ignorant falsification and parody of what GA stands for and what we do.' Clearly, GA do actually do more than simply: 'Circulate texts denouncing their founder and ideological architect Richard Hunt.' This sentence is included in a table satirising seven 'anarchist' organisations, and it would be idiotic to take any of the 'what they really do' comments literally since, within the context of my article, they are clearly signalled as jokes. However, parody is not as the Bomber reductively claims, a 'falsification.' Satire works by pushing things to an absurd but logical conclusion. Humour is often used to make serious points and satire, in particular, is much more than simply 'a joke.' The problem is not as the Bomber imagines, that the Neoist Alliance does not mean what it says, but rather, that GA does not understand what we mean. The Bomber whinges that: 'the Neoists say we do not understand their position. In saying this, they admit they have failed to communicate.' Communication is a two way process, how can we communicate with individuals whose conception of this process is so fundamentally flawed? We cannot communicate with inert matter, it is not us who want to hand down 'truths' from on high, it is GA's refusal to put any effort into understanding what we are saying that is the problem, because real communication is a process of dynamic interaction.

Under the title How Green Is My Readership in Lancaster Bomber 11, it is claimed that the Neoist Alliance use four 'basic lies' about Green Anarchist. The first concerns Richard Hunt. The Bomber claim that 'Hunt was not the founder of GA, neither is he our ideological architect.' Whether or not Hunt was a founder of GA is not important to our argument, although Hunt certainly claims that he founded GA. For example, on page 16 of Alternative Green 10 (Autumn 94): 'Marcus Christo, Alan Albon and myself (Richard Hunt) started the other magazine Green Anarchist. They elected me editor, I created Green Anarchist. I did 90% of the work. I edited it for the first twenty issues. All the theoretical ideas of Green Anarchism are mine: autonomous self-sufficient villages, regression of technology, disproof of the theory of Division of Labour, the exploitative relationship of the core to the periphery.' If I am wrong in saying that Hunt was the founder of Green Anarchist (along with Marcus Christo and Alan Albon), then I am quite happy to retract the statements I have made to this effect; if I have made an error in this matter it is because the sources I used were inaccurate. I certainly wouldn't view Hunt as any more of an unbiased observer in this matter than the current membership of GA. Access to the first issue of Green Anarchist might help me make a more definitive judgement on this issue; if Hunt made a contribution of any type to Green Anarchist 1, and he claims to have edited it, then it is not unreasonable to describe him as a founder of the magazine.

Regardless of whether or not Hunt edited Green Anarchist 1, it is clear to me that he was the ideological architect of Green Anarchism; among other things, he wrote and self-published the pamphlet The Natural Society: A Basis for Green Anarchism in 1976, well before GA was founded! In the only 'substantial' statement of GA's historical development and ideological position since the split with Hunt, Paul Rogers devotes the first two pages of Green Anarchism: Its Origins and Influences to the development of Green Anarchism from before recorded history to the establishment of the Ecology Party. The next nine pages are concerned with the development of Hunt's ideas before the founding of Green Anarchist. Hunt then emerges in the following six pages as the dominant figure in Green Anarchist from its founding in the mid-eighties until Alternative Green was established in 1991. After this, Rogers devotes five pages of his pamphlet to what he calls 'American Anarchist Green Traditions' (giving a paragraph to this and a paragraph to that, and only a paragraph to Fredy Perlman, while not everyone the Bomber mentions as influences even gets that). The final 5 pages describe how these and various other bits and pieces were grafted onto Hunt's right-wing framework for Green Anarchism. Why would Rogers devote more than half his pamphlet (excluding the bibliography, title and contents pages) to Hunt, if Hunt was not the ideological architect of Green Anarchism? Despite the antagonistic attitude GA adopted towards Hunt after the split, Hunt still receives far more attention than anybody else. Lancaster Bomber states that: 'People can change. Whatever Richard Hunt is now (including links with fascists) this does not prove that what he did before was fascist. At the time of The Natural Society (1976) and during his work with GA during the mid to late 1980s Richard Hunt was not a fascist.' While I agree that people can change, analysis of Hunt's ideas show them to have been right-wing all along. In the text The Sucking Pit, the Neoist Alliance gives a detailed analysis of the Paul Rogers pamphlet and other Green Anarchist material from the post-Hunt era, and conclusively demonstrates that despite an incoherent coating of leftist rhetoric, GA's current ideology is right-wing. It is perhaps superfluous to add that this particular brand of Green Anarchism is fascist precisely because it is grounded in Hunt's pre-Gulf War 'thought.'

Presumably on the basis of the satirical leaflet Green And Brown Anarchist, the Lancaster Bomber asserts that we seriously claim that they have plans to set up green death camps. This leaflet was attributed to the Green Action Network, not the Green Anarchist Network. While readers were meant to draw parallels between the ideology of the spurious organisation Green Action and Green Anarchist, it ought to be clear to anyone who reads the text carefully that they are not being presented with the actual views of any existing organisation; the fact that a number of people, including Quentin McDermott a researcher from the tv programme World In Action, believed the leaflet to be genuine, merely demonstrates that the general level of intelligence in the world today is sorely lacking, and it is precisely this situation that makes GA's ideology dangerous. We stated in our leaflet Green Anarchism Exposed: 'With its anti-urban ideology and utopian vision of small autonomous communities, Green Anarchist has yet to face the problem of how it plans to 'dispose' of a huge 'surplus' population. While supporters of Green Anarchism might hope that the urban proletariat will simply starve to death (thereby saving them the trouble of killing us), if they successfully instigated a counter-revolution, the material unfolding of events would ultimately force them to resort to the concentration camp and the Gulag.' Since our texts stress that GA do NOT consciously realise the logical implications of their incoherent ideology, it is absurd to make out that we seriously claim GA actually has plans to set up green death camps. While I make a clear distinction between Green Anarchist and Alternative Green with regard to this issue in G-Spot 16 (as I state, Richard Hunt openly proclaims in his current publication that his political programme requires a 75% reduction in the population), the Bomber is unwilling or unable to acknowledge this point. Personally, I believe it is highly unlikely that GA will ever be in a position to instigate a counter-revolution, and even if it was, it clearly has yet to face up to what this entails. However, our references to the horrors of the Nazi death camps and Soviet Gulags do serve to draw attention to GA's schizophrenic pronouncements on population reduction, and this thinly veiled Malthusianism is treated in detail in The Sucking Pit.

The Bomber's third 'basic lie,' anti-tax agitation, is also dealt with in The Sucking Pit, at one of a number of points where we discuss the contents of Green Anarchist 38: 'In the... editorial, criticism of an anti-tax poster was distorted into being "laughable" criticism of an anti-poll tax poster. The item in question doesn't mention the poll tax, and it would be bizarre indeed if Green Anarchist were still disseminating propaganda material on this issue long after the community charge had been abolished... As a campaigning issue, anti-tax agitation receives more attention from broad swathes of the American far-Right than any other topic; US extremists claim that liberal politicians tax the rural middle class and then spend the money on the inner cities in order to 'buy' the votes of the urban poor (the racial content of this argument is made more or less explicit depending to how close the groups and individuals utilising it are to the conservative mainstream). On the other hand, the fierce resistance to the poll tax in Britain arose precisely because it was a way of taking money from the deprived inner cities and redistributing it to suburban and rural toffs. The fact that Green Anarchist are seeking to confuse the sharp class distinctions between those who agitated against poll tax, and the ongoing campaign by far-Right extremists against tax as an alleged subsidy for the poor, demonstrates the way in which they create an ideological vortex or sucking pit.'

The last of the Bomber's four 'basic lies' is equally absurd. We do not, as GA falsely claims, believe that since 'some fascists are green, therefore all greens are fascists.' In The Sucking Pit we offer Malthusianism as one of a number of possible tests for eco-fascism, as we conclusively demonstrate, GA fail it. We see nothing wrong with concern about the state of the environment, and the Bomber offers no textual citations to back up its fourth 'basic lie' because there aren't any that would support this contention. What the Bomber does instead is quote me out of context as saying 'if people can't tell the difference between the left and the right, they might end up supporting Nazi ideals (sic) without even knowing what they are doing.' This fails to back up GA's case because rather than talking about greens in general, this point is made after I have explicitly referred to the magazines Green Anarchist and Alternative Green as being 'dangerously close... to hardline fascism.' By falsely insinuating that the Neoist Alliance attacks all greens, GA are, in effect, calling for unity, and by these devious means, they intend to suck innocent parties into the highly compromising position of having endorsed Green Anarchist's vile brand of eco-fascism.

Despite having lumped Lancaster Bomber and Green Anarchist together as the 'major' players in the Green Anarchist Network, there is a clear difference in their attitude towards the Neoist Alliance. While issues 37 and 38 of Green Anarchist set out to smear me by falsely claiming I associate with everyone from spooks to the far-Right, the individual behind the Bomber at least makes a feeble attempt to deal with what I and others have written, before resorting to all the usual GA smears except those concerning alleged associations with fascists. My criticisms of GA deal with their politics, whereas they criticise me on the basis of the company they allege, but which I do not, in fact, keep. The Bomber should perhaps bear in mind that User-Friendly Nazis: How Green Was My Holocaust (and I am ready to defend every statement it contains) was written after I walked into Compendium and was informed that some loony from GA had just been in claiming I was involved in Nazi politics; a few hours later, I spoke to AK Press and was told someone from GA had approached them at a bookfair spouting the same piece of nonsense.

The Neoist Alliance does not, as the Bomber seems to think, operate on the basis that 'my enemy's enemy is my friend.' The reason we do not support the Green Anarchist and Larry O'Hara criticisms of Searchlight is because we do not agree with the reactionary perspective from which they are made. However, anyone who is able to understand the arguments we put forward in Green Anarchism Exposed can see that we are highly critical of Searchlight. The fact that the Bomber claims we are 'pro-Searchlight' simply proves that it does not understand our position. Likewise, the Bomber asks rhetorically: 'Did the Red Army argue with fascism? No , they stormed Berlin.' Even the Anarchist Communist Federation are able to point out in Organise! 38 (April June 1995, p. 13-14) that: 'The Stalinist bureaucrats were no more "anti-fascist" than the Western leaders. The USSR had never stopped trading with Nazi Germany. The non-aggression pact signed between Hitler and Stalin was linked to an economic agreement: Poland would be carved up between them and Stalin would take over Lithuania and Estonia. The Jews of the Soviet part of Poland were as much delivered up to the Nazis as those of France. The Soviet leaders only became "anti-fascist" when the German state broke the pact by invading the USSR in June 1941.'

Appalling as the effects of Nazi anti-semitism were, the Bomber makes another major factual error by talking about the '6 million people murdered by the Nazi state.' The six million figure refers to the Jewish victims of Nazism; Gypsies, Slavs, gays, communists and the mentally and physically handicapped were also systematically murdered by Hitler's regime. This still comes no where near accounting for all of the 20 to 40 million (depending on which estimate you accept) Soviet citizens of all nationalities whose deaths are attributable to the Nazi state. Gil Elliot in his Twentieth Century Book Of The Dead (Penguin, Harmondsworth 1972, p 26 , 94), provides a very conservative estimate of those who died during the Second World War. Elliot's figure of just over 20 million Soviet dead is made up of an even split between troop and civilian casualties. Since the collapse of the Bolshevik regime, it has become apparent that for propaganda purposes the Stalinists refused to acknowledge the full extent of their losses during the Nazi onslaught, and the number of Soviet dead has subsequently been revised drastically upwards. Elliot further estimates that between them Britain and the Commonwealth, France and the United States, suffered nearly one and a half million casualties (although obviously not all of these are attributable to the Nazi state). The list could go on but I think I have made my point.

It is somewhat rich for an individual who apparently does not know the most basic historical facts about Hitler's dictatorship to claim that our criticisms of Green Anarchist are 'a complete insult to the... people murdered by the Nazi state.' The Bomber ridicules us for our knowledge of philosophy, it's about time the individual behind this publication grew up and realised that books have their uses as tools of reference, as well as their obvious limitations. As we observed in the leaflet Green Anarchism Exposed: 'Green Anarchist does not know what fascism is, and it is therefore incapable of recognising itself as fascist.' And as if to add the icing to this cake, the Bomber caterwauls that the Neoist Alliance lacks humility, a complaint that exudes the rotten egg smell of the idea of God, a stink which envelops all right-wing mystical cretins.

Stewart Home, Neoist Alliance

Published by Unpopular Books as part of Green Apocalyse ISBN 1 871593 66 6

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